Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for transmitting digital data over data lines between subscribers forming data sources and data sinks and being disposed in a network having a ring structure and connecting a plurality of subscribers to one another, including network segments with a single data line each being formed between two adjacent subscribers, which includes transmitting the data in the network in a format specifying a clocked sequence of individual bit groups of equal lengths each including at least one partial bit group forming a data channel being assignable temporarily to two subscribers in the network for a data transmission. The data are transferred in a continuous data stream which is synchronous to a clock signal. The clock signal is generated by a single subscriber. All other subscribers synchronize themselves to that clock signal. Purely asynchronous data transmision methods have to be differentiated therefrom as packet or package-oriented data transmission methods, for example ATM-methods.
Methods of that type are used wherever a plurality of electrical and electronic devices that are to exchange information with one another are interlinked through the use of data lines. In the audio fields for instances the communication between interlinked data sources on one hand, such as CD players, radio receivers and cassette tape recorders, and the associated data sinks on the other hand, such as an amplifier-speaker combination, can be controlled by such a method.
In known methods of that type, the existing data channels for data transmission are each assigned temporarily, in other words for a certain data transmission, to the two subscribers involved in the network, that is the data source and the data sink. In a network with a ring structure, those two data channels are blocked in the entire network for the entire duration of the transmission of data between those two subscribers. In other words, other data transmissions can be made only through further data channels, even if those two subscribers are not involved in the other data transmissions.
That has the disadvantage of requiring that a large number of data channels be kept available, if a plurality of data transmissions are to be possible simultaneously between different subscribers in the network. That entails considerable expense for equipment and administration. If there is a fixedly specified number of data channels available in the network for data transmissions, then the transmission capacity, that is the number of simultaneously possible transmissions between different subscribers in the network, is also limited.